


Mouse Cage

by Lithosaurus



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, F/M, Peggy!Cap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 18:20:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4273293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lithosaurus/pseuds/Lithosaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erskine's formula worked. It could make a super-soldier given the right material to work from. The problem was, that starting material had a few restrictions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mouse Cage

**Author's Note:**

> let's see if i can update this faster than one chapter a month

Erskine handed her the mouse first. He lifted it from its wire cage and placed it gently in her cupped palms. She wrapped her fingers loosely around its delicate, furry sides and brought it closer to her face. It looked like a perfectly healthy rodent.

“What’s so important about this one?” Rogers asked beside her.

“It worked.” Erskine answered shortly. Rogers swore softly and leaned over to get a better look at the mouse. It pulled back from the abrupt movement and nestled deeper into her hands.

“What did you change in the serum?” She asked.

“Nothing. It is the same formula.” Erskine answered. “I changed the subject.”

Peggy rolled the animal over onto its back and lifted its tail. “A female? All the others were male?”

Erskine nodded. “It was meant to eliminate another variable.”

“Do you really think that’s it?” Rogers frowned.

“It is the- the most-” Erskine paused to find the word. “The only major difference between success and the others, as far as I can find.” Not that there were many other trials. Erskine had set out to protect people, not torture animals. The failed attempts at applying the serum were enough to turn anyone’s stomachs, even with simple rodents.

“Any idea why it would make a difference?” Howard asked, also crowding around the mouse.

“No, but there is much we do not know about sex.” Erskine replied. He held out his hand for the mouse and Peggy returned it to him. He carefully placed back in its wire cage. “I have three other female mice ready. If you could help me set up another radiation bath, Mr. Stark.” The two scientist left, returning to the lab. The mouse sat in its cage, carefully sniffing its surroundings.

 “Phillips and Brandt aren’t going to be happy.” Rogers said.

“Phillips and Brandt asked for a perfect soldier.” Peggy replied. “Abraham’s found a way to correct major birth defects and immunocompromization. If anything, they should be happier. Curing thousands of crippling disabilities will be an easier sell to the public than super-humans.”

“Apparently only if they’re women.” Rogers snorted.

Peggy bit her tongue. She knew why Rogers was upset. Erskine had picked him personally as a potential subject after his third attempt at enlisting. Knowing him, he’d be more worried about whether Erskine’s work could prove useful than whether he could reap the benefits himself, he wouldn’t mean for his words to sound as they had. She watched the mouse begin to groom itself. Last week it, along with a number of the several dozen other lab mice, had paralyzed hind legs. Now, the mouse walked unsteadily across the bottom of the cage.

“The military won’t be so upset that they’ll cut out funding.” She reasoned. “Brandt might not get his platoon of perfect soldiers but he’ll get the best PR your military has ever had. Imagine vaccination scaled by ten. How many women and girls will lead better, healthier, _longer_ lives if this works.”

“I know.” Rogers nodded next to her. She could practically hear him scolding himself for being upset. Rogers was the sort of impractical sod who would see wanting that for himself as greed.

“Don’t lose hope. Erskine’s just made a giant leap. He’s found something that prevents the uh, unwanted side-effects. He’ll continue working until he makes it applicable to everyone. If Phillips can be convinced to go public with Rebirth we’ll get more scientists. More heads that won’t be wrapped in ‘confidential’ stamps.”

Rogers stood next to her and stared at the mouse. In the months they’d worked together on Project Rebirth, she’d learned to read many of his expression but whatever he was feeling didn’t show now. He let out a breath after a moment and lifted the cage off the table.

“Might as well start the testing course with her, see how she compares to the healthy mice.”

“It’s nearly ten o’clock, Rogers.”

“You got anywhere better to be?” He tucked the cage under his arm and carried it towards the door. The four of them were the only ones left in the facility for the night. Richards, Howard’s assistant and representative when he was called away, had left hours earlier. Erskine’s two assistants who had escaped from Germany with him and Evie, theyoung nurse-turned-mostly-veterinarian, had trickled out after him. Apart from them, her strictly professional contacts, and Florence, the grandmotherly woman who ran the front shop, Peggy didn’t have much of a social circle and her current apartment was just one of the converted office spaces upstairs. Rogers, as much as it stung to admit it, was right; she didn’t have anywhere else to be.

She followed Rogers’s path out of the back room that feasibly could have fit with the antique shop charade and down two into the laboratory. The lights were warming up over one of the lab benches. Rogers rummaged through the supply cabinets full of stopwatches and testing equipment. Erskine had originally brought him into Project Rebirth as a candidate for the serum and, officially, that was all he was to the project. Unofficially, it was hard to find good help for a top secret scientific experiment most deemed a wild goose chase. Erskine trusted him and Rogers picked up the variety of tasks needed to keep the group running smoothly. He even had learned enough German in the last three months to help bridge the language gap between Erskine, the two other refugee scientists, and the English speaking members of the team.

It was an unusual team but it worked. Evie had been picked up shortly after the SSR’s evacuation of Erskine and his countrymen. She was brilliant and had great promise but had a disadvantage Peggy knew all too well. The Germans were with the SSR because they were the experts in their field, even if that field was rather niche. She suspected that Kantrowski had his own revenge based motives for producing Allied super-soldiers which she fully understood. Howard stayed with the project because he had enough pull with the US army to have his own pet project and Richards (poor, long-suffering Richards) was in the group because he was Howard’s employee.

“I’m still here because my friends and family are all on the other side of an ocean. Your family is on the other side of the borough, Rogers.” She grabbed one of the lab coats Erskine insisted on and threw another at Rogers.

“Like you said; it’s ten o’clock. And there’s more to do.” He pulled on the coat with deliberately ceremony and gestured at the mouse. He opened his mouth as if to continue you speaking but decided against it. If he mustered up the courage to say, he’d say it, she decided. Even after months of working together and their friendly relationship, he occasionally fell back onto his awkward, unsure habits.

“Were you thinking of running a standard maze first?” She called over her shoulder as she unlocked the file cabinet of records on the mice.

“Sounds good. What about the two-chamber logic test next?”

Peggy pulled out the thick stacks of files and placed them on the bench next to Rogers’s elbow and the wire cage. Rogers fidgeted for another minute as they set up the maze and subject. He hit the stopwatch and determinedly focused on the mouse.

“Erskine’s still going to be picky.” He burst out.

“Pardon?”

“About who gets the serum, I mean.”

“Obviously,” Peggy glanced over at her coworker. “considering the criteria he’s made since Schmidt. Finding a good choice will be tricky”

“He’s already found a pretty good choice, Carter.”

“Rogers-”

“No, I’m serious.” He interrupted, proving that really was. “Erskine hasn’t wanted the same sort of soldiers as Brandt or Phillips from the beginning because he’s already seen what happened with Schmidt. He has requirements. He wants someone who knows what it’s like to not have power, who’ll stick up for the people who need it and won’t abuse whatever abilities the serum gives them. You fit that description.” He looked her in the eye as he finished. He spoke with the sort of earnestness that came from the type of person Erskine was looking for.

“I’d be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.” She said after a pause. “But the fact that the last human recipient of Erskine’s formula no longer has a face has also crossed my mind. I know how wary Abraham is about who the serum will be used on and when he’ll deem it ready for use. We have months of testing before it’s ready for any humans.”

“But when it is?”

“Then I’ll make a decision with the information I have then.” Rogers’s eyes narrowed slightly. They both jumped slightly when the bell at the end of the maze rang. The mouse stood on the depressed pressure plate and watched them, waiting for its food reward.

“That was,” Rogers glanced at the stopwatch and frowned. “3 minutes 26 seconds.”

“Previous top time was in the seven minute range for this complexity of maze.” Peggy ran a finger down the records in Rogers’s neat handwriting. “ _That’s_ not an expected result.”

“So if the Nazi’s set up a series of elaborate mazes as part of their strategy…” Peggy grinned at his comment but stayed focused on the mouse. She dropped a peanut into the maze and watched as the mouse gnawed on it.

“Let’s run that again, shall we?”

-

“We’re ready if you are.” Howard gave her a charming smile and a sweeping gesture towards the capsule. He was the only one in the room who seemed at all cheery. Erskine, his two fellow scientists, and Evie all appeared nervous but confidant in what they had made. Howard was beaming at the power station like a proud parent. Phillips looked grumpy and skeptical but she didn’t really expect much more from him. Rogers’s eyes were flicking between Erskine, her, Phillips, and Stark. It wasn’t a big tell but he was apprehensive. Between them, indifferent to whatever emotions were being felt, was the disturbingly coffin-like radiation chamber where she would be exposed to both the serum and the vita-ray bath.

It didn’t seem like two months had passed since Erskine revealed how to get the serum to work. In those two months, not a single one of the test animals had ended up as a ‘melter’ but there were quite a few unexpected discoveries. Peggy wasn’t scared of the serum, or the pain of the procedure, but she didn’t know what new and unexpected discoveries would be made after she stepped out of Howard’s shiny new device. She wasn’t scared but she was definitely wary of what the future would hold.

**Author's Note:**

> I read that dialogue aloud to my dog and timed myself. For accuracy. Because I always strive for accuracy in my pseudo-history pseudo-science fiction.  
> edit: so this might be dead. necromancy is always a possibility but unlikely. if anyone is more in love with this than i am, message me and i'll send you my notes


End file.
